Nash Equilibrium to Team Management By Frazer Pereira

Nash equilibrium, named after John Nash, is a set of strategies, one for each player; such that no player has an incentive to unilaterally change their action. Players are in equilibrium if a change in strategies by any one of them would lead that player to earn less than if they remained with their current strategy. For games in which players randomize (mixed strategies), the expected or average payoff must be at least as large as that obtainable by any other strategy.

In the world of management, teamwork is one of the most crucial and fundamental aspect for the appropriate functioning of an organization to accomplish desired aspirations within the constraints prearranged. These constraints include time, manpower, technology, inventory and other attributes which affect the working of the desired objective. Thus the popular saying in team management is “The best result comes when everyone in the group works for the best of the group“.  Another theory exists for an operational environment is given by Adam Smith. Adam Smith is known for his explanation of how rational self-interest and competition, operating in a social framework depending on adherence to moral obligations, can lead to economic prosperity and well-being. Modifying the popular explanation in accordance to Adam Smith, “The best result comes when everyone in the group works for their own benefit”.

Now both these concepts evidently have flaws. Working for your own self in accordance to Adam Smith creates what is termed as ‘parasites’ in the team who profit from the effort of others. On the other hand advancement at a personal level is inhibited by the principle of working for the group. This prevents the members from giving their paramount contribution due to an assortment of aspects, the chief reason being human personality and emotions.

To diminish these flaws we’ll apply Nash Equilibrium to the two concepts. In simple words the new adapted principle for the most effective team would be “The best result comes when everyone in the group works for their own benefit as well as for the benefit of the group” (As quoted in the movie “A Beautiful Mind”). This theory if used would effectively reduce the flaws in the existing system and construct an environment in the team where personal growth and team objectives can be coexisting. We will now see how to apply this principle to a Human Environment of a Team.

Based on this new principle we will define new-fangled objectives and subtasks for the team. These objectives comprise of strategies of individual contributors’ i.e. team members. These strategies can be classified as goals or needs of the members. Things like promotion, experience, recognition, working hour’s flexibility, etc. Experience can be classified as experience in a particular field, subject, software etc. We also need to divide the objective into various subtasks (A, B, C and so on), each subtask having a common background. These tasks for a general objective can be research, planning, inventory management, resource management, advertising, debugging etc. Combining these two simple policies we can define the parameters essential for the achievement of Nash Equilibrium into a Team Environment. Combining these two strategies based on the similarities and differences between the Personal Objectives and Subtasks, we will assign responsibilities suitable to each individual. For example, individuals seeking experience in management should be assigned management related duties. Those seeking promotion should be assigned objectives which will reflect their credentials for the promotion or payroll increase.  Family people seeking flexible hours would be assigned those hours at the cost of increased responsibility or lack of choice in the task assigned. Thus the individual will be motivated to accomplish the task at maximum efficiency as it will benefit the individual to the maximum. Diverting away from the strategy assigned will cause a stoppage in the personal goal and characteristic human nature will prevent this from stirring. Now since the tasks when combined are the final goal, maximum efficiency in the task would lead to maximum efficiency in the final output. People striving for their own personal gain while providing assistance for the ambition of others would further maximize the final output efficiency, as it would feel good to doing good for others as well as achieving personal goal due to Human Nature.

In the above proposed theory we have Task A assigned to Personnel (1). Circumstances may arise where the goals of individuals would be similar which would prevent the division of task in the above manner.  For this, Task A needs to be further divided so it would be effectively distributed amongst the individuals having similar objectives. This complicates the planning stages but if used effectively would increase the efficiency of the particular task and thereby increasing the efficiency of the overall objective.

The proposed theory involves increase in planning and control over the team and would need a first-rate manager to accomplish it effectively. But if applied the output gain would be much higher than by the normal procedure. What’s left is to implement this principle in a research environment and find the effectiveness compared to current methods.

Veritas : The truth shall set you free

I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to create a appropriate design for Veritas (Latin for Truth). In my search for an appropriate theme, I did come across many interesting and highly complex theories regarding what we commonly know as truth. Little did I realize that what we think in such simplicity has a complex underlying concept. It is classified as a topic under a very strange and undefined branch of science most commonly known as Metaphysics.

'You are not wrong because we say you are wrong; because you are wrong, we who say this say the truth'. Ideally it is the inherent status of the subject matter that makes our own statements true. The reciprocal of the statement is false. You cannot imply truth by the manner of speech. Better said, you cannot force truth on the subject matter. You can only state it. In even simpler words, what we say is true if is aligned with the facts related to the subject matter and not the other way round. Metaphysics states it as "To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true." I guess it is a game of words played by some of the most brilliant minds in medieval times. None of them in the end could ever define truth. It is similar with trying to define gravity or why is 1 smaller than 2. These fundamentals are a part of the bedrock on which we have build our science. After examining the essence of truth, it gets even more complex. Its like the Theory of Relativity, the more you think, the harder it gets.

The only Veritas you can state confidently is about your own self. By the basic definition, since you yourself are the subject matter; you cannot possibly be wrong; unless you want to or are intentionally wrong. Veritas helps us nurture friendships and bonds. You can always say things that would make your friends and family happy, but there is no soul in that happiness. As said, "veritas vos liberabit" or simply said, the truth shall set you free.


P.s There is also a famous saying, "in vino veritas" Which means 'Wine speaks truth'; said even simpler, Truth is told by the one who is drunk.

Do what you want to do

Now this idea is not exactly novel. You can compress it even further by saying "Do what you like." or "Do what you love." As simple as it sounds its complexity increases the more you think about it.

As humans, we have two transitions in life. We start as kids, grow up to become adults and eventually transit into the feared old age. As kids we're supposed to have fun. As adults we're are supposed to work. The rule here is that work is not equivalent to fun. Other than a few exceptions, that is the widely accepted rule of an adult life.

As I summarize from my own life, this is not our fault. Time and again we are being prepared for this grow-up work. Our teachers have time and again reminded us in school that work is not fun. We can't blame them either. We didn't make their work any more fun! Parents say that handling 2 kids is a nightmare; imagine the hell we have put our teachers through. Again, it is not our fault either. We as kids were doing what we did best back then, have some good old fun.

Thus we end up working because the society wants us too. We work to make money or our of sheer boredom and to maintain inertia of the current state of our life. Money and laziness are the best and worst reasons why we end up not doing what we love. People get accustomed to their lifestyle. A change after that is difficult to incorporate. Anyone would be called a fool to leave a well settled state of life to pursue something obscure. Eventually, beliefs of how you wish things to be become contaminated by how things are. The virus spreads and you eventually forget your dreams and get on with reality. We are not ready and willing to take the high road. You want it to be easy. If its difficult, you don't want it at all. People want to go to heaven without dying. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way (Thank you Dan Gilbert for that wonderful thought).

I realized our audience is limited too. Our ideas and work is shared amongst the small circle of friends we live with. What we love should not only make us happy but should bring a smile to others as well. Our friends should be the compass to the outside world. The more people you help, the better.

I do want to write a lot more; but the length of the article is inversely proportional to the number of people reading it. So I'll take a break now and continue sometime later!

The Era of Disasters

Recently the sting of natural disasters have been on a rise. Its almost as if someone is trying to tell us something; warn us about something. The frequency of earthquakes has increased exponentially. Earthquakes seem to be happening everywhere. From Africa to Asia to America. Its become quite a common occurrence of most natural disasters. Ancient Volcanoes are putting one of man's greatest technologies to a stand still. The One-who-shall-not-be-spelled Icelandic volcano was bad, and they say there is another one 10 times stronger waiting to erupt! There are floods and storms in every continent. The sink-hole in Guatemala is as creepy as it can get. Its almost like staring into deep abyss. My own country, India is facing one the worst heat wave to ever hit the country and the continent. It wasn't the same a decade back. Agreed that these disasters aren't the worst offenders in this century but their cumulative effect is to be feared and respected. The even scarier and statistically correct part of the whole discussion is that the frequency of their occurrence is on a rise. Just in the month of May we have had floods in Guatemala, Our dear volcano becoming active again, heavy rains in Haiti, tornado in Mississippi, earthquakes everywhere. Our luck is so bad that we have a storm warning right in the very place that has had the worst oil spill of the decade. The probability of that occurrence is almost near zero. Yet we will have a hurricane right in the middle of a very mishandled oil spill, making it even more worse. Not to forget , our favorite Global Warming (Accompanied with global flooding).

Question rightly asked is, what exactly is going on? Are we really approaching the joked 2012 Apocalypse? The Mayans predicted a great change/world end in 2012. These guys were the best mathematicians so we can't question the integrity of their calculations. According to the Mayan Elders, we will face a great change in 2012. And it seems, some part of it has already begun. Today's sink hole which swallowed a building with nearly 30 people in it is an evidence that we need to fear something. Never would we have thought that a round hole would 'eat' humans up, but it happened. Something is happening. Is it 2012? Is it something we're unaware of completely? A change is inevitable. It may have already begun and it seems to be accelerating at an alarming rate. There is someone or something that is giving out a lot of warnings. Although this is just statistical evidence, it is worth thinking about for at least 7 minutes of your time. If someone can figure it out, a lot of things can change!

P.s: These are just natural disasters. Don't even get me started on Man-made ones!

Choice Theory

Choice Theory AKA Control Theory By William Glasser, M. D.

People are driven by six basic needs. All of our choices and behaviors are based upon the urgency for SURVIVAL, POWER, LOVE, BELONGING, FREEDOM, and FUN. Glasser asserts that 95% of all discipline problems are misguided efforts of children trying to achieve power.

By understanding the drives for SURVIVAL, POWER, LOVE, BELONGING, FREEDOM, and FUN in people, we become more conscious of the need for our world to be a quality world of our choosing.

The Ten Axioms of Choice Theory

* The only person whose behavior we can control is our own.
* All we can give another person is information
* All long-lasting psychological problems are relationship problems.
* The problem relationship is always part of our present life.
* What happened in the past has everything to do with what we are today, but we can only satisfy our basic needs right now and plan to continue satisfying them in the future.
* We can only satisfy our needs by satisfying the pictures in our Quality World.
* All we do is behave.
* All behaviors are Total Behaviors and are made up of four components: acting, thinking, feeling and physiology. All Total Behaviors are chosen, but we only have direct control over the acting and thinking components.
* We can only control our feeling and physiology indirectly through how we choose to act and think.
* All Total Behavior is designated by verbs and named by the part that is the most recognizable.Whoops that's ELEVEN?? - Glasser couldn't count!

Does our world need a superhero?

I just saw a movie ‘Defendor’ and was quite impressed the way it was done. It’s a story about a delusional guy who thinks he’s a superhero. He dies in the end, but not before touching the hearts of everyone in the town and stopping ‘the Bad Guy’. The movie ends up with encouraging the viewers to try to make a difference and to act a little less selfish in their actions. We’ve seen a surge of superhero movies and series from Hollywood over the past two years. Incidentally superheroes were introduced in the media during the World Wars. It was a subconscious effort to instill hope in the minds of people, especially teenagers. Kids would look up to the superheroes and hopefully take inspiration regarding the virtues of good and acts of selflessness.

Admit it! Everyone has those days when you wish you could look up in the sky and wish superman would swoosh down and take your problems away. Even Homer Simpson says, “I'm not normally a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me, Superman!” So wouldn’t it be great to have a real superhero to look up to? Someone who doesn’t just make promises? Someone who is a spotless white sheet in the grim dirty world. We have leaders, we have social workers and we have the clergy men of various religions. But there is no one who the entire world can look up too. There actually is no one an entire nation can look up too. People don’t read comics anymore. Kids play extremely violent virtual games where the motto is to kill. Indoor activities are preferred to outdoor physical exertion.

Everything that could ever turn a kid into a superhero is being avoided. Even in academics we’re gaining more impractical knowledge, something that will never help us in life. It is sad to see that a kid will no longer get excited over a Spider-man or a Batman comic as they did a few years back. What I want to say is that right now more than comics, more than world leaders and more than a academic degree, we need a Superhero. When we read about him in the newspaper or hear about him in the news, we would feel hopeful. When we see him, we would smile and feel happy that he’s there for us. Someone to fill the air with all that is good!

Superheroes tend to have an extraordinary ability that separates them from normal individuals. Some have superhuman abilities such as super strength, flight, telekinetic abilities with prime examples being Superman, Wonder-Woman, Captain America, The Flash, and Spider-man and so on. Some have technology on their side; for example Oracle, and of course Batman. There are many who have both while there are some who have a very few but excel in those and strive to protect their ideals. In the end, what are common is their morale and the code they follow. They have the courage to protect others while risking their own life. History and comics show that superheroes don’t lead a good life. They tend to be alone a lot. They personal life is a mess and they never have a stable relationship. They tend to risk much more than their lives and are not afraid to take it to an unbelievable length to protect others and serve what all is good. And yes, it sounds very good and very idealistic. And it is all frictional. That is one reason why we need someone real. Someone to who can be a symbol to abolish the ‘unseen evil’ that is destroying out world. We would all agree that there is something that’s not right with the world. We can’t put a finger on it to define it but we do need something to take it away. Call me idealist, but what we need is a superhero (The more the better rule applies here quite well). Right now, in this time of depression we need superheroes more than anything else. We need a ray of hope. We need a fantastic escape from reality to bring us from the brink of despair to the peak of optimism.

The current events bring me closer to the conclusion that we need a superhero, desperately! Post 9-11, people said, “It would be nice if a superhero existed who could have stopped it”. A similar statement would be said about many other events that have occurred in the past few years. Wouldn’t it be nice to turn back the clock and prevent those bombings and killings? Wouldn’t it be nicer if an individual would have prevented a gruesome incident from happening and shown the world a single ray of hope, something we all been waiting for? After 9-11, the firefighters, policemen, and everyone involved positively in the incident were called heroes. They satisfied the definition of a superhero as someone who rose to a situation to risk their life to save others. Yet there are a very select few who can name and identify even one of these individuals. Their sacrifice is not only recognized but also ignored. Now we’re concentrating on the ‘plot’ of 9-11 rather than the lives lost in 9-11. Will an individual rise to a level where their deeds will be respected and known to the world to a level where they can affect and inspire others to follows their path? I do hope someone does soon.

I agree that the idea of there being "Real Life Superheroes" is a little crazy, but there have been times when I've gone walking late at night and not seen a single police officer for hours. What if something was to happen? If a superhero just happened to be there it may deter any such criminal acts from happening. The example as trivial as it seems, puts forth the importance of superheroes. I asked a few friends whether they would prefer if superheroes in the real world. I got various answers like “I wish for a superhero who would give me jobs” to “You should be looking for a money making position rather than a frictional comic book character.” And even a plain “No”. These are the people who believe that a superhero is too realistic. Why? Sadly the world does not work that way. There is probably never an easy solution to all the problems. This is the real world, where we live by solving problems, one at a time and consequently become a better human. The existence of a superhero will make a weakling out of us. Or will it really weaken us? Would it weaken us to see someone stronger than us, having the courage to do things we can’t? I guess this is what makes us human. We can’t stand the fact that there is an existence that is can be termed as an evolved human, a greater being. The TV series Heroes follows the fact that meta-humans or superheroes are feared and that humanity is not ready to accept their existence. Our nature will always create fear for things we don’t understand.

The question still stands. Do we really need superheroes? Wouldn’t it be nice to look up in the sky and for once smile because you know there is hope? Wouldn’t it be nice to know that if you take risks, someone will be there to catch you when you fall? When you save someone’s life, you would not be afraid of an entire gang coming after you? And even if they do, it would be ok, because you can’t put a price on life. Don’t you want your kids to hold a hero as their mentor rather than the lead of “Grant Theft Auto”? My opinion is strong and I stand by it. We need superheroes. As a friend of mine said, we need not one but many of them. We need a fantastic escape. We need dreams that inspire hope. We need Superman!